


life’s a record

by epiphanistic



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Minecraft diaries - Fandom, aphmau - Fandom, mystreet
Genre: Alcohol, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Garroth’s POV, Implied Smut, M/M, MCD, Mentions of Suicide, Suicidal Thoughts, college party, garroth is depressed, garroth is lowkey alcoholic, just for fun, laurance is just straight vibin, no actual smut, very short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:47:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22976395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epiphanistic/pseuds/epiphanistic
Summary: the only good part about garroth’s college life is the booze. he’s looking for a way out, and maybe a cheap fling with a party’s co-host is the answer.
Relationships: Garroth Ro'Meave & Laurance Zvahl, Garroth Ro'Meave/Laurance Zvahl
Kudos: 35





	life’s a record

The shot pours down my throat. Tastes like soap. Not really worth it. Things are hazy, but when are they not even when I'm sober?

I grimace with the taste, the glass sliding across the table in disregard. Another. One more, maybe. Four shots will get me drunk. I could probably do something I'd regret then, but it's better than doing nothing. 

I'm such a stereotype. Drinking alone in my house because I'm just like my mother and there's objectification in being drunk. I could be happier. I can do things with meaning, then. 

My door vibrates with a knock or two, and I decide the most respectful thing to do before I answer it is to pour up again. I open it with a sour face - the taste having kicked in - and I'm offered a look of concern from the owner of the knock. 

"Are you alright?" He asks. 

"Sorry," I wipe my mouth of the residue, "just took a shot."

He looks behind me, brow raised, at my lonely, silent apartment. "Big gathering you got going on back there."

That's fucking embarrassing. 

"Yeah, well sometimes it's nice for people to mind their own fucking business, too," I retort, leaning against my door frame indignantly. I can already feel it. I'm saying things I'm not supposed to, even if I know they're wrong. 

"Didn't mean to be rude." He pulls a face that tells me he couldn't care less. "My friends and I are having a party down the hall. Come along? We always see you around the dorms and you look like you need a friend." 

"Jeez, I'm sold," I drool, sarcasm spilling out of my mouth as if my lips are numb. 

"Yeah, well come or not. I could care. Not going to. It's just an invite, you know?" He asks me, his eyes darting to the hall beside him. "No big deal. If you're gonna be a douchebag, I'm gonna go, okay?" 

"No, don't- fuck," my hand curls around my door frame for balance, fingers digging into the wood, "let me- let me- uh- let me sober up, give me a sec'."

I pull myself away from the door, his blurry features still burning in the back of my head as I go to my kitchen sink, letting cold water spill from the tap so I can splash it on my face. It should sober me up a bit. A socially acceptable level of drunkenness, rather than crying-on-my-bathroom-floor-because-I'll-never-amount-to-anything drunk. Like all alcoholics in denial, I know how to fake my way through the 'I'm only tipsy' stage. It's a skill only the most pathetic can master. 

Pulling myself away from the sink with water dripping from my chin, I wipe it away with my shirt as a metaphor for my depressive drinking episode, completely not caring or even paying any notice to the new wet patch on my shirt. It will dry. 

I grab my phone and my keys on the way, messing with my hair before smiling at him from the door. 

He pulls a sort of demeaning 'really?' face at me, and then ignores my hopelessness, "I didn't catch your name, by the way."

"Garroth," I answer, belongings shoved into the back pocket of my jeans, "sophomore. Music major." 

His lips tug upwards a bit. "Laurance, sophomore, Performing Arts." 

Frankly, I will forget his major. I do not relate to it well enough for it to stick in my mind, especially if I'm drunk. His name, possibly - I've always been okay with names even after the drinks have washed most of my memories away - but his interest is something I'll have to be reminded of when my brain capacity is bigger than a peanut. 

Where leads me is a textbook college party. Cheap drinks in red solo cups lined up on the counter, a game of beer pong on the other side of the room, people making out and groping each other on the couch. 

"This your dorm?" I ask him. 

"Yeah, but it's my roommates’ party. I'll be on cleaning duty tomorrow," he tells me, and then, "you want a drink?"

"Sure," I nod. I do not need one.

I drink to new people. Liquid courage is an amazing metaphor because it radiates the truth. New faces I can't recall, names that leave my mind as soon as they enter, but potential acquaintances. People that could mourn me when I die and make my life seem a little more worthwhile. It's selfish, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. 

I don't remember time passing, but it does anyway, and I feel like I'm moving through water as I take shots with another group of juniors and then stumble away before I have to try to make conversation. 

Looming in the back of my throat, I can feel the throw up threatening to ruin the party. I need to go home, get some water, anything. Finding my way to a seat is easy, stumbling onto a breakfast bar stool and letting it sink down with my weight. My head falls in my hands, letting the dizziness rest for a second so my bearings can be reacquired. 

God, what’s the point? It's a room full of people that don't really know me - perhaps parts of me, little, insignificant fragments - but pretending like being here is doing anything but heightening my intentions is just fucking stupid. I should go home. I should muster in dread by myself; the impending countdown of when I'll finally give up and kill myself waiting on me without company. Then I won’t find a reason to regret it. 

The seat next to me is taken. 

"Sociable, huh?" He asks me. Same fucking boy from last time. Laurance. He's trying too hard. Desperate. 

"Yeah, well..." I don't bother to finish my sentence, swirling my vodka-cola in my cup. 

"Hey, someone's a mopey drunk," he nudges my arm. He’s drunk too, but when it's him there's more life in his eyes than less, "come on, cheer up. Dance or whatever."

I don't care. "Fuck off," I'm saying before I even realise. 

He doesn't take it to heart. Doesn't realise, probably. He laughs instead, and it's loud, the kind that probably could bring tears to his eyes if it went on for a little longer. Standing up, he stumbles on his feet, grips my shoulder and giggles some more. I'm annoyed already. 

"Come on! My friends are dancing, just come for a little bit." He tugs at my sleeve. 

The numbness in my brain silences my thoughts, buzzing in my head as I'm pulled upwards, feeling like I'm shouting at him to fuck off when all I'm doing is trying to keep my balance with my mouth locked shut. He introduces me to his friends, their names and faces an equal blur. My hands are cold, but they're buzzing with warmth when I stumble over, falling into him, and he laughs. I suppose I laugh too, because I can't help it. 

Fuck it, I suppose. If I'm going to kill myself tomorrow I might as well make the most of what's left of today. We're not even dancing anymore; it's more or less grinding, creating friction, and I can't even remember if I'm supposed to like guys or girls anymore. The line has been a little out of focus recently, so maybe it's time to erase the smudge marks and draw out a new one. 

My melancholy drowns out in body movements, innocent grinding leading to something with purpose, his ass pressed up against my crotch within the crowd. It's lewd. I'm never like this. I don't think we know what we're doing - if it's something remorseful - but he likes it when I touch him and I like it when our wet lips touch in a kind of sloppy kiss, so there's nothing left to lose anymore. Late hours in the night turn even later, fading back into single digits, leaking closer to sunrise. 

It’s a colossal waste of time. 

Somehow, I end up in his bedroom. I barely register it (the pleasure is temporary and we both pass out in the end) but it happened and it's a part of history now. When I awake with ignorant beams of sunlight smashing through the window and forcing me to squint, the hangover isn't as bad as it used to be anymore. Maybe I'm accustomed to headaches - to nausea - by now, but it isn't killing me. It's predetermined. The warmth in my arms is mobile, skin moving and rubbing against my own, a groan slipping past lips, a head full of doubt. 

He - Laurance, kudos to me for remembering - opens his eyes a fraction of an inch, the morning having got the best of him. In denial when he sees me pretending like I hadn't woken up ten minutes ago, he lets out a, "Fuck," under his breath and puts a hand to his head. 

"Morning," I greet, my voice raspy with last night's antics, sounding like I haven't spoken in decades. 

His eyes open in a little more than just a slit this time. "Oh, it's you." 

"It's me?" I ask. 

"Thought you were some stranger," he tells me, rubbing his eyes. 

"Are we not?" I offer. 

"We're on a first name basis, which is more than I could have hoped for," he says, laying his head back down on my chest, "when I invited you over, I seriously didn't have the intention to fuck. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," I say, because I genuinely believe him, "we were drunk."

And, you know, I could have purposely run out into ongoing traffic if I hadn't been forced to dance to shitty music in an unnecessarily cramped dorm room, so I owe that to him, as well. 

"Yeah," he agrees, "broke the ice, at least."

I smile a bit at that, and he makes no attempt to move himself off of me. Comfortable too quickly. It's kind of reassuring to know that I'm not making this awkward, and that he finds it second nature to have his fingers dance across my chest with an absent mind. It dilutes things a little bit, giving me sensations to focus on rather than my own impending fate. I don't have to kill myself today if I'm with him the whole time. I don't have to kill myself tomorrow either if I could see him again, because it's evil to kill myself right after something like this has happened. Selfish. He'll be convinced that it was his fault, and that's not fair. I'd have to wait at least a couple weeks after seeing him, so if I just keep seeing him I can find a loophole out of it. It's postponing the inevitable, but time is valuable. 

I don't want to kill myself. It's obvious by now. It's not that I'll miss life, or that I want to see how things play out, it's just that I'm scared of the pain and what comes next. Life is worthless but death is even more so, and therefore I may as well wait until things become unbearable so I can do it on the spot and literally live everyday as if it's my last. Things won't get better, but at least my final days can be of the slightest bit of happiness or thrill. 

I'm aware that I'm coming up with excuses not to die. Eventually, these alternatives will thin out and I think I'll know when it's time. A change in atmosphere, a shift in outlook. My death should not be random. 

"Do you have anything to do today?" He asks me. 

"Besides sitting on my ass watching cable TV and getting drunk, no," I reply, and he finds that funny even though it's the inexplicable truth, "why?"

"We should get lunch. Or dinner. I usually like to get to know the guy before I get to know his dick, but it looks like that's a little late," he says. 

"Sure," I answer, gaze fixed on the ceiling. 

This is the start, I think. I can distance myself from my family this way, create one of my own far from my childhood memories. I could die, or I could start fresh. Either way it's a blank slate. There's a choice I'm going to have to make, and when it comes I'll have to decide whether my entire life concludes misery or an inspiring comeback story. I do not have hope for this. I just know my chances. 

Even if Laurance ends up hating me, I could say I tried before I gave up. I tried to help myself and nothing worked. Instead of nothing, perhaps I could amount to a little bit of love. 

Or not. It's all a bunch of maybes. I suppose the only real reality is the fact that even if I can't be alive in my own life, I can be alive in his somehow, and that has to count for something. Anything. 

It's a record, and it only plays once. It's just a choice of taking the needle off, or playing it through until the song ends.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much! i wrote this so long ago but only just recently revisited and edited it!! i hope you liked it!
> 
> i feel like im the only garrance writer now :(. i don’t even watch aphmau anymore, i just fell in love with the characters. is it still good?
> 
> thank you so much for your support!!! i love reading all of your comments!!


End file.
